In Outlook 2003, I have enabled the setting “show an envelope icon in the notification area”. With this setting enabled, whenever I get a new email, an envelope is displayed in the Windows system tray. I like this feature because it is less obtrusive and distracting than the methods of new email notification (e.g. Desktop Alerts, playing a sound, etc).
The only problem with this setting is that, by default, the envelope icon gets displayed even when the new email is spam (i.e junk email).
This is a big problem for me because probably 90% of my email is spam and I actually lose a few minutes every day by switching to Outlook whenever the envelope icon appears, only to discover that the new mail is spam. It is so annoying!
With prior versions of Outlook, this was a tricky problem to solve. My solution back then was to hack out a VBA script and hook it into Outlook with a rule. My code was based off this example. It was a pain in the butt to create and install and sometimes it failed with non-descriptive error messages that said something like “rule failed”.
When I installed Outlook 2003 the other day, I noticed an email folder called “Junk E-Mail”. When I saw that, it gave me hope for a better solution. So, I started reading about this new folder in Outlook 2003’s help file. I read and I read and I read. To my chagrin, I found no relationship between the Junk E-Mail folder and the envelope icon in the help file.
Undaunted, I thought I would try an experiment anyway because I thought there might be something magical about this new folder. After all, it can’t be deleted like user-created folders.
Before I tell you about my experiment, I’ll give you some background information. At our office, we run Exchange 2003. However, we front this with a Spam Assassin server running on a Linux box. All incoming mail first goes through the Spam Assassin server, which detects spam and marks it by appending a special string (e.g. **THIS IS FRIGGING SPAM**) to the subject line before forwarding it on to Exchange.
For my experiment, I created the following Outlook rule, using the rules wizard thingy:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
with **THIS IS FRIGGING SPAM** in the subject
move it to the SPAM folder
except if from {anyone in my office}
or except if from {my wife}
or except if from {etc, etc, etc}
stop processing more rules
The SPAM folder shown in the above rule is a folder I had created. When spam arrived, it was correctly moved to the SPAM folder but the envelope icon still appeared, which is NOT what I wanted.
Next, I edited the rule, changing the SPAM folder to the magical “Junk E-mail” folder. Voila! It worked! The next time I got a new spam message, the envelope icon did NOT appear.
If this tip helped you, please leave me a comment!
Hi, I am looking for just the opposite: I want to programmatically make the envelope appear.
Let me explain: when I receive a fax in msfax, I save the tiff, and make an “email” out of it. But even when I mark this “email” as unread I don’t see the outlook envelope. Your example code you used in previous versions of outlook works in VBA (access), so maybe you can help me, perhaps tell me what lines to change in your code to get the icon to appear?
Greetings,
Wim K.
Sorry, Wim, I have no suggestions.
An alternative to the always-move-to-the-Junk-E-mail-folder, is to modify the rule actions setting “mark as read” in addition to the move to the SPAM folder. This notification-icon-set-for-deleted-spam has been bugging me for months as the volume of spam increased — and I did not realize that your solution of using the Junk E-mail folder would solve the problem. I was exploring writing some custom code when the idea about using the rule’s “mark as read” finally hit me.
Maybe you can help! I use the built-in Junk filtering Outlook supplies for my workstation. Junk is placed in the Junk Email folder just fine. I unfortunately get the damn notification envelope in the system notification area when all I have is spam. Following your lead a bit and piecing togethar macro code, I wrote a macro to mark everything in the Junk email folder as unread thinking this would remove the notification icon. Unfortunately the folder tree doesn’t update its count of unread messages and still lists all the messages I just marked as unread as still being there…and the notification envelope by the clock stays as well. do you know of a way to refresh the folder tree? I am going out on a limb and assuming this will clear the envelope in the notification area as well…
anon,
No, marking the mail as read will NOT work. Intuitively, you’d think it would work but it doesn’t. The key to my rule-based solution is that it moves suspected spam from the Inbox folder to the magical Junk E-Mail. My rule, made with the Outlook Rules Wizard is:
Apply this rule after the message arrives
with **THIS IS FRIGGING SPAM** in the subject
move it to the Junk E-mail folder
Note that my solution relies on having a Spam Assassin intercept the spam and prepend “**THIS IS FRIGGING SPAM**” to the subject line, before depositing it in my inbox. In other words, the message first goes into my inbox, not the Junk E-Mail folder and then the rule detects it as spam and moves it to the Junk E-Mail. Then, for some reason, Outlook magically turns off the envelope thingy.
You might be able to adapt my rule to your situation where the message seems to get delivered directly to the Junk E-Mail folder instead of first going into the Inbox.
I hope that helps.
hey man!
thanks for this – the faux notification for spam has been driving me up the wall…
our work system is similar to yours, spam gets tagged in the subject so i created a rule to detect them and perma-delete… it worked but i still had the notification….
changing the rule to move to the junk folder instead totally worked!…
one thing to bear in mind – if you try to add anything fancy to the rule, that turns it into a client-side only rule, the problem reoccurs… this included trying to mark the messages as read in the junk folder, or attempting to delete them (which just error’d the rule)… but i can live with a right-click empty, so long as the icon leaves me alone! :)
thanks again matey!
I’m trying to do the same. But I don’t want the emails to go to the junk folder. I want them to go to another personal folder, but I don’t want the envelope icon to appear. Any suggestions would be very appreciated!! Thank you very much!
Thank you! Exactly what I was looking for. Outlook can be incredibly counter intuitive at times. I’m assuming after setting up the rule, you will then modify the Junk E-mail folder properties to permanently delete periodically.
For me – same as Apostolis – I want to move emails into a personal folder, but leave them as unread, but clear that damn envelope. Any suggestions?
You must move the emails into the special folder called “Junk E-Mail”. Moving the mails to any other folder will not work. You will still get the envelope.